FOOD FOR THOUGHT
t is no surprise that a culture renowned for its cuisine has an agriculture sector to back it up. Turkey is the seventh-largest agricultural producer in the world and around half of the country is agricultural land. Agricultural products account for around 13% of Turkey’s exports, and Turkey is the world leader in a number of products, including hazelnuts, cherries, figs, and apricots.
Looking domestically, the agriculture sector accounts for around 8% of GDP, a figure that has steadily decreased as modernization has grown the share of Turkey’s industrial and service sectors. However, the sector holds an outsized influence in the Turkish labor market. Though its contribution to GDP trails far behind the industrial or services sectors, around a quarter of employed Turks work in the agricultural sector.
The sector’s labor dynamics have resulted in some vexing questions for policymakers, chiefly around the issue of land inheritance. Current law in Turkey often results in the division of inherited land into small scale plots—the average farm size in Turkey is less than half of that in Europe. This practice is good for employment; smallscale farms employ more people than commercial farms and contribute in unquantifiable ways to the quality of life for Turkey’s many rural inhabitants. However, small-scale farms are inefficient and struggle to compete with commercial
Ifarms, which constitute much of the global agriculture market. Regulators, eager to support employment, have developed different support schemes for small-scale farms. This is common practice; however, Turkey is behind in developing programs for R&D, skills training, and productivity. One notable private-sector success in the area comes from Işık Tarım, a major dried fruits and nuts producer. Its “Happy Village” initiative focuses on villages or groups of farmers—rather than individuals—to institute crop management training systems aimed at growing and harvesting techniques that increase raw-material quality.
Turkey’s success in the global agriculture market is in large part due to the abundance of high-value agricultural products suited for the climate, like hazelnuts, apricots, cherries, figs, olives, tobacco, and tea. However, Turkey has seen much of the economic value of commodities like hazelnuts slip through its grasp by exporting raw, rather than processed, products. For example, raw hazelnuts constitute almost 60% of total hazelnut exports. As a product consumed primarily in its processed version—Ferrero alone uses 25% of global hazelnut supply for its chocolate products —Turkey’s hazelnut producers are increasing their investments in processing facilities to capture more value. ✖